


Outpost Four

by lwise2019



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:01:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26819980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: People from Rønne and members of Mikkel's extended family intend to establish a colony at the outpost where the Silent World explorers were rescued.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 7





	1. We Should Go Back

“We should go back,” Merethe Clausen mused.

“But the party's just getting started!” her husband, Vilhelm, objected, turning from clinking his mug against that of Lucian Jeppesen. The party was indeed just getting started, set off less than an hour ago by the radio announcement, breathlessly awaited for hours, that five of the six explorers in the Silent World had been found alive and well. Most importantly to the people in the Old Soldier Inn, the Danish medic, Mikkel Madsen, was among the survivors. Of course, like everyone else in the Known World, they had hoped all members of the expedition would be found alive, but as Danes, they were most concerned with the fate of their compatriot.

“What? Oh! I don't mean going home. I mean we should go back to the mainland. Mikkel's team survived, after all, except for the poor non-immune who shouldn't have been there anyway.” To the Norwegians, the expedition was known as “Sigrun's team” and to most of the world it was the “Silent World explorers”, but to the Danes it was and always would be “Mikkel's team”.

“But — Kastrup —” Lucian objected.

“Kastrup was ten years ago —”

 _”You_ didn't lose a brother at Kastrup.”

“Well, yes, understood. But shouldn't we honor their memories by going back?”

“Sunk cost fallacy,” Niels Jakobsen mumbled, already somewhat in his cups, having as usual started drinking in the morning.

Merethe glanced at her cousin in surprise; she hadn't known he was sober enough to participate in the conversation, and certainly hadn't expected him to know a term like that. “I didn't mean it that way. But Bornholm is filling up. We _must_ go back eventually. Why not now? And why not _us?”_ By “us” they naturally understood her to mean the people of the Little Copenhagen community.

There is a bond among those whose ancestors survived the Great Dying together, and few communities were more tight-knit than the Little Copenhagen community within Rønne. They were descended from a group of thirty-four immune survivors, mostly soldiers and sailors, who had escaped from monster-infested Copenhagen at the height of the Great Dying, taken a tug boat, and started an immune colony on an uninhabited island, having assumed that any inhabited island would be as monster-infested as the city from which they had fled. They had survived there for almost a decade before being rescued (according to the Navy) or repatriated (according to the survivors) and taken to Bornholm. They retained a greater emotional connection to the mainland than most of the surviving Danes.

“The bridge collapsed,” Vilhelm put in.

“Yes. But we wouldn't want to go back to Kastrup anyway.” That seemed obvious to her.

“No?” That was Lucian. “So how do you expect to honor their memories?”

“By going back to the mainland somewhere that _isn't_ heavily infested, which Kastrup probably is and Copenhagen certainly is.”

“And where would _that_ be?” Lucian asked, annoyed. “How could we know that?”

“Weren't you listening to the radio? Mikkel's team made it to that outpost on foot with a wheelbarrow of books, and then stayed there for a week or more. If there'd been grosslings along the way, they'd've had to abandon the wheelbarrow. And if there'd been grosslings around the outpost, surely they'd've had to fight during that week. That area _can't_ be heavily infested.”

“That outpost?” Vilhelm frowned, looking over at Lucian for a response. “You mean we should start the reconquest from _there?”_

“It has to start from _somewhere._ Why not from there? With the bridge gone, we'll have to invade by ship regardless of where we want to start from, and at least we know that area isn't heavily infested.”

“Yeah,” Vilhelm agreed. “You know what? I'm going to celebrate today. We can reconquer the world tomorrow.”

* * *

When the Army has fewer than a hundred soldiers, and the nation itself has fewer than thirteen thousand souls, relations between the military and civilians tend to become rather informal.

“Welcome, Mette,” General Simonsen said, coming around his desk and offering his hand. “What can I, or rather the Army, do for you?”

As they sat facing each other in armchairs, instead of Mette looking at him across his massive desk, she knew his cordiality was not for Mette Madsen, but rather for Mikkel Madsen's little sister. The plight of the explorers in Silent Denmark had captured attention across the the Known World, but especially in Bornholm, the last redoubt of Denmark, and above all in the Danish Army, since Mikkel had been a soldier and served at Kastrup as late as a week before the disaster.

“Thank you, General. I'm here to talk to you about starting again to reconquer the mainland.”

“Uh … I don't think that's really practical. It was hard enough to persuade people to volunteer for the reconquest the first time, and we lost so many … it could be decades, generations even, before we'll be ready to try again. But of course it's understandable that you would want to start again.”

General Simonsen was so clearly uncomfortable at having to deny her what she wanted — to deny Mikkel's little sister what she wanted — that it was almost sad. She felt a little guilty about using her brother's celebrity like this, but she thought Mikkel would probably find it amusing. After all, he'd avoided death at Kastrup because the Army had demoted him and ordered him back to Bornholm to serve out the remainder of his enlistment digging ditches and peeling potatoes. It was only through the intervention of “that evil little Norwegian”, as the family referred to General Trond, that Mikkel had received a rather irregular medical discharge based on an injury that had occurred half a year before and was fully healed. As Trond had then taken Mikkel with him to work in faraway lands for seven years, the family felt Mikkel had gotten the short end of _that_ deal.

“Oh, I entirely understand that the Army isn't in a position to do it. We're a private group, just like Mikkel's team — well, except we're all Danes — and we have a plan for this. But we need permission from the Army.

“Here's a list of the people involved, along with our military histories and specialties. We're all experienced — I was a member of the Shore Guard, for instance — and we're all immune.”

Simonsen examined the list of sixteen names and looked up thoughtfully. “I recognize most of these names. These are people of Little Copenhagen, correct? And you and some other Madsens?” In a city as small as Rønne, it was not surprising that the head of the Army would be familiar with the people of the Little Copenhagen community, for they had a strong tradition of military service. “How did you get mixed up with them?”

“Mikkel's been good friends with some of them for a long time. Arne Larsen, in particular.” There, she'd brought Mikkel in again, exerting a little more moral pressure. “Arne isn't part of the group; he's over sixty and you know he has that inn to run, but he's helping us.

“So what we need is a base on the mainland. Specifically, we want to use Outpost Four.” That was the outpost where Mikkel and the other explorers had waited for over a week for the rescue ship. “And the tank, if we can find it and fix it. You see on the list that I'm a mechanic and we have others as well. We think we can fix the tank even if we have to rebuild the whole engine. There should be books left behind in the tank as well, so we want to retrieve those, sell them, and split the proceeds with Mikkel's team. That will help finance the whole thing, though of course Little Copenhagen will be funding most of it. If the organizers of Mikkel's expedition are able to organize more such expeditions, we hope to be able to offer them a secure base to start from, and get paid for that too.

“Our goal is to move into the outpost, repair it, fortify it, and start actually raising crops there, to in effect replicate what happened in some areas of Norway: just a small group of immunes, walled off from the grosslings, with some support from more protected areas, growing the population naturally and then, with a strong base, moving out to add another wall, and then another and another until some day the whole continent is reconquered!” Mette stopped herself, having intended to be very businesslike and finding herself instead sounding like an idealist.

Simonsen regarded her silently for a moment. “Well. If you're a private group and all you want from the Army is the use of an outpost and a tank that we're not using anyway … how do you propose to get to the outpost, by the way?”

“We've been promised a sailing ship, from Little Copenhagen of course. If you give permission, Arne will go to Öresund base and ask to be allowed to stage out of there. Assuming we have that, it's a relatively short sail to the outpost, and we can evacuate back to the base if things don't work out as expected.”

Simonsen nodded, reaching a decision. “All right. You and your group may use the outpost and salvage the tank and its contents, assuming you can find it, of course. So, ah, will Mikkel be joining you?”

“No, he hasn't agreed so far.” Actually he hadn't been _asked_ so far, but there was no need to get into that. “The team went off to Iceland, you know, to stay with Reynir Árnason's family for several weeks —”

“The Icelandic Pied Piper,” the General put in with a wry grin. The claim that Reynir had somehow led away thousands of Danish spirits had made its way to Bornholm, where the population, being largely skeptics, thought the whole thing an entertaining joke. _“Mikkel_ doesn't believe that nonsense, of course.”

Mette smiled. Of course her practical big brother wouldn't believe any such thing, though he hadn't publicly disputed his teammate's story. “Yes, the Pied Piper. But he did become part of the team and his family did offer the team lodging. Anyway, the whole team has gone off to Finland to drop off the Finn, Lalli Hottawhatever.” Her brother had sent a brief note to that effect from the quarantine island; she was a bit unhappy that he'd gotten _that_ close to Bornholm and hadn't stopped to see the family. Still, he was travelling with “the Viking princess” as Michael called her or “the crazy Norwegian troll-hunter” as Mikkel himself called her, and Mette could never begrudge him that.

“Ah. Well, going through such danger together for so long is bound to create strong bonds. All my best to him.” The General stood and offered his hand again, indicating that the meeting was over. They shook hands and Mette left quite decorously.

The scene in the Old Soldier Inn, when Mette reported success, was very far from decorous.


	2. Renewed Reconquest

Heavy footsteps clumped on the deck behind her, large hands on the ends of powerful forearms grabbed onto the rail beside her hands and clung there, white-knuckled. Mette saw the hands out of the corner of her eye, unwilling to look away from the horizon. She hoped her cousin, Knud Madsen, would not vomit over the rail, for that would probably cause her to do the same, and she was pretty sure that in the course of this ten-hour trip she had already lost every meal she had eaten in the last ten days.

“Ugh,” Knud stated.

“Captain Olav says just a couple more hours,” Mette encouraged him. Captain Olav was Olav Svendsen, owner of the sailing ship _Red Mermaid_ , a fast and trim fishing vessel. On shore, he was just Olav or, for the young people of Little Copenhagen, Uncle Olav, but on board he felt it was important to maintain his command image.

“Why did I volunteer for this?” the other moaned. “I must have been drunk.”

“You were,” she agreed. “But you did have six weeks to sober up and think better of it. Anyway, you've been here before.”

“We came on a _troop ship._ It was enclosed so we didn't have to worry about getting snatched off the deck, and it steamed straight to the base. It didn't wander back and forth all over the sea!”

“That's called _tacking._ And nobody's been snatched off the deck.”

“Yet.” They stared at the horizon side by side for a while before he muttered, almost to himself, “Mikkel went back. If he can, I can.”

Mette ventured a glance at him before returning her gaze to the horizon. Much like Mikkel in many ways, her cousin was even taller, over two meters, and likewise powerfully built, though Mette loyally believed that her brother was the stronger of the two. Like Mikkel, Knud had wavy hair, though much darker than her brother's dark blond, more like her own curly hair, which was such dark brown as to be near black, and of course he lacked the luxuriant sideburns that made Mikkel resemble a lion to her eyes (not that she'd ever seen a lion in the flesh). Knud had bright blue eyes like Mette's and unlike Mikkel's muddy greenish.

She could think of no answer to his comment, if it was even addressed to her, for she knew that he, like her brother, bore scars both visible and invisible from service at Kastrup. Settling for something non-committal, she replied, “We'll be there soon.” They watched the horizon in silence until the lookout on the crow's nest cried, “Land ho!”

* * *

Knud Madsen, the only Kastrup veteran in the project, was the first to go ashore, climbing from the ship's dingey to the dock, the expedition's cat, Britta, riding on his shoulders. Britta, a Class B cat but _very_ intelligent, leapt down and immediately began to investigate the outpost as Knud helped Rikke Mortensen and Dedric Møller to join him. Neither of the younger men had actual experience fighting grosslings though they had served in the Shore Guard and were therefore trained to do so. All three were armed with shotguns, daggers, and meter-long maces in case of close-quarters fighting; their rifles remained on the ship. Bjorn Svendsen, sailor and son of Captain Olav, remained in the dingey, ready to row them back to safety if it became necessary.

Britta went first, her task being to identify any grosslings that might have slipped into the outpost in the months during which it had been deserted. No one expected her to find any since there had been none when the first expedition arrived, but in the Silent World, nothing could be taken for granted. When she strolled back unalarmed, the three men relaxed their vigilance somewhat while Bjorn rowed back to the ship to bring over the remaining five members of the first team: Merethe and Vilhelm Clausen, Mette Madsen, Lucas Jensen, and Noah Andersen.

After the team members, Bjorn brought over their supplies: radio; weapons, clothing, and other personal gear; food, of course, some fresh but mostly dried, canned, or salted; spare parts both mechanical and electronic; lots and lots of wire of various gauges. Seeds and seedlings would arrive later, with the second team. The two canine members of the team, Artur and Kolina, arrived with the food and immediately leapt to the dock and began exploring the outpost. All the human members pitched in to load the crates into the wheelbarrow which Mikkel had pushed for so long, and had left behind.

With passengers and gear landed, the _Red Mermaid_ set sail for Öresund base, where the second team and more supplies would soon be arriving. Merethe and Mette, the mechanics, set to work examining the half-dozen bunkhouses with the aid of Lucas and Noah, laborers and capable mechanics in their own right. Though the bunkhouses had been carefully sealed a decade before, there had been occasional leaks and in a few cases, vermin had made their way inside. The sensors weren't working in two of the bunkhouses but Mette, the most experienced of the four, was able to track down the shorts and repair them. Knud, Rikke, and Dedric climbed onto each bunkhouse in turn, carefully checking the roofs for weak spots, but mostly looking for good sniper posts, a sniper being a practical necessity for anyone in a fixed location in the Silent World. Vilhelm, meanwhile, organized his gear and began fishing off the dock.

The eight invaders feasted that evening on fresh fish to celebrate the first day of the renewed reconquest.


	3. "There's a dog out there"

The fences were, as Mikkel had reported, in good shape, though they would have to be replaced by a concrete wall before the autumn came. For now, with the nights almost as short as they would ever be and the team keeping quiet, there should not be a lot of grossling activity. “Should not be” and “Would not be” were not the same thing, however, and so two people were on guard at all times, one of their best marksmen armed with a rifle on the roof of the bunkhouse where both the original expedition and the current team had taken shelter, and someone else patrolling on the ground with the dogs. Dogs lacked the special senses of cats, which could detect grosslings at close range no matter how stealthy and no matter the obstacles between them, but dogs had far better noses and ears than any human and would raise the alarm if anything approached the fences.

Merethe was not one of the marksmen and so was patrolling on the ground in the evening, Artur beside her. Just as the light began to fail, Artur stopped quite abruptly, staring out across the open space between the outpost and the forest. Automatically dropping the shotgun into her hands, Merethe peered out along his sightline, seeing nothing. “What is it, boy?” she whispered, unwilling to alert any grosslings that might be out there.

Yet, she saw on turning to him, his hackles were not raised; on the contrary … she studied the set of his ears, the angle of his head, the curl of tail … “Dedric!” she called up to the sniper on the roof, still keeping her voice down, just in case.

“What?” He peered over the eaves at her, then directed his gaze back at the slowly darkening surroundings. “The dog's heard something?”

“No. There's a dog out there, in heat.”

He looked down again, disbelieving. “Are you _sure?”_

“Yes, yes, look at him …” But how to explain it? She'd always been good at interpreting dogs' body language, but she'd never been able to describe exactly what to look for. “Anyway, yes. There's a dog out there. Don't shoot her if she approaches the fence. A dog that's survived _here_ … just like the cats, we should try to get her if we can.”

Dedric gave her a dubious look and finally shrugged. “If anything that looks like a dog approaches the fence, I'll turn on the lights and examine it first.”

The outpost was, of course, equipped with powerful lights to allow for defense in darkness. A decade before, the Army had removed the bulbs — no sense leaving them where they would not be used and could be damaged over time — and now the team had replaced them, but the lights were left off. So long as it was light enough for the marksman to find a target, they would stay dark, for grosslings were known to be attracted to artificial lights. Once the sunlight failed, if the dogs alerted the team to something approaching, or the marksman spotted something suspicious, he or she could flip a switch that had been set up on the roof to turn the lights on full, hopefully blinding whatever was approaching and allowing for aimed fire against it.

“There's a _dog_ out there?” Mette asked, equally disbelieving, having heard the end of the discussion and coming to learn more.

“Yeah, why not? Mikkel reported he saw the tracks of at least one dog, maybe two, and where there's one dog, there has to be a whole population of them. And one of them's out there for sure, and she's in heat. Look at Artur.”

Looking at Artur, Mette quite plainly didn't see what Merethe saw, but she shrugged and agreed. “Okay, you understand dogs better than I do. I'll take your word for it — and Artur's, of course.” She scratched behind his ears and he wagged his heavy curled tail without looking away from the woods. “I'll watch for a dog as well.” Mette was one of their marksmen and in fact would be guarding during the darkest hours — not true night, at this time of year, but dim twilight. “Should we let him go out there?”

Merethe studied the dog again. “There's no challenge in him. I don't think there's any males out there, just the female. Maybe she got separated from her pack —” She could think of lots of ways that one dog might end up without a pack in the deadly dangers of the Silent World. “If so, then she'll probably hang around near Artur and maybe we can lure her in.”

“Your choice,” Mette agreed, and returned to the bunkhouse to prepare for her watch on the roof.


	4. Knud reminisces

With the moon half-full, Mette thought she would not need the lights even if something did approach. Vilhelm was patrolling below, Britta sleeping across his shoulders while Kolina prowled around and Artur stayed near the fence, looking yearningly out towards the forest.

A brief flash of light to her right made her close her eyes to restore her night vision: someone had come out of the bunkhouse and was climbing the ladder to the roof and her sniper's nest. Despite his efforts to walk softly, Knud's heavy tread was unmistakable. He settled beside her, his own rifle ready on his shoulder.

“Can't sleep?” she asked, concerned.

“None of us could ever sleep well here. Wait 'til you try. The nightmares …” His voice trailed off. After a bit he went on, “We need to work on the wall. Those fences won't stop a swarm. And we don't have enough soldiers to hold them off.”

Glancing at him, shrugging uncertainly and saying nothing, Mette turned her gaze back to the moonlit landscape. The plan was to keep quiet and out of sight, avoid stirring up the local grosslings, of which they hoped there would be few, until the other half of the team arrived and they were able to repair the tank and use it to build the wall. Since Knud knew all that as well as she did, she didn't point it out.

“That was our mistake,” he went on, perhaps not even really talking to her. “We couldn't build a proper wall, a city wall, around all the tanks — they were too spread out — and if we built one just around our base we couldn't get the tanks in. And we wanted those tanks. The Old World built to last and we thought, or the powers that be thought and we all believed them, that with those tanks we could clean out the whole area. They'd failed when the soldiers of the Old World used them, sure, but we knew better. We knew what we were fighting, and they didn't. And there are fewer grosslings now anyway.

“There was no way to fully repair them out in the field. It was all the mechanics could do to get them running, and some of them not even that; they had to be towed by the ones that ran, all the way back through the tunnel and across the bridge. But they were such good tanks, better than anything we could build even if the whole Known World put its mind to it.”

He paused for so long that Mette wondered if he expected a response and what response she could possibly give. “Such good tanks,” he repeated finally, “and we paid for them in blood. We built a barricade instead of a five-meter wall like we should have had, and we thought all us soldiers, with our rifles and our shotguns, could defend the base behind the barricade. Only we couldn't. There were breakthroughs, more and more as the winter went on.

“When there was a breakthrough, it didn't matter what you were doing, even if you were sleeping, you ran out to fight them. And maybe you ran right into them and they fell on you with their claws and fangs and — So I had to go back to Öresund to get stitched up, and so I wasn't here when —” He stopped.

Mette could think of no answer to this at all, simply putting her right hand on her cousin's strong left arm and squeezing to let him know she cared.

“I heard there was a dog out there,” he said after a while in a much different tone. “Have you seen it?”

“No, things've been really quiet. Dedric didn't see her either. But Merethe said she was out there so … I guess I'll be careful about shooting at things that look like dogs.”

He nodded silently. “I'll do the same. The next watch is mine, if you want to turn in early.”

“No, I'll stay. We can watch together, if you like.”

They watched together until the sun rose.


	5. Journey

The next several days they were busy repairing, cleaning, and consolidating gear and supplies. The decade-old tuna fish in each bunkhouse was collected and put away for use in dishes where its taste could be masked. No one really wanted to eat it, but it was protein and not to be wasted. For now, they all lived in a single bunkhouse and ate communally, Vilhelm doing the cooking. When the second team arrived, there would be a selection of bunkhouses ready for them, and indeed members of the first team could spread out as well. Mette watched by night and slept during the days and was less troubled by nightmares than she had expected based on Knud's words.

On the fourth day, the _Red Mermaid_ brought the second team: two more Madsens, Anna, who was a first cousin to Knud, and Marcus, first cousin to Mette; brothers Frederik and Oscar Hansen; Bjorn Nielsen; Jens Olsen; Noah Jensen, who was quickly dubbed Old Noah to distinguish him from the younger Noah Andersen; and Sofia Andersen, wife of said younger Noah. They almost all were young in the combined team; at thirty-two, Knud was the eldest and Old Noah, at twenty-eight, the next eldest; the rest ranged from Dedric at eighteen to Mette at twenty-four. Only Knud was a veteran of Kastrup though Noah Jensen had volunteered to serve and was in training on Bornholm when the disaster occurred. All the rest had served in the Shore Guard or the Coast Guard.

Along with the team members, the ship had brought more supplies including four hens and a rooster, complete with a disassembled chicken coop for them. Knud and Anna set to work reassembling the coop while Mette gathered gear for the planned journey to the abandoned tank in the morning.

Though over two meters in height, Knud did not appear stretched, as do many tall men; on the contrary, he was broad-shouldered and powerful, and Anna, a woman of average height, looked like a child beside him. Passing by with an armload of wire, seeing her cousins at work on the coop, Mette was painfully reminded of herself as a child following her big brother Mikkel and helping him build and repair coops and barns and anything else he could find to work on. But Mikkel had gone away, and now he was gone again. Mette carried the wire to the wheelbarrow and returned for another load.

That night, the night before the planned expedition to find and repair the abandoned tank, Frederik took the sniper watch so that Mette could sleep and be alert for the trip. The night was very quiet, no grosslings, and no sighting of the dog, though Artur made it clear that she was still out there.

* * *

“The dog still with us?” Merethe glanced at Artur, who was staying close to Knud as he led the way with the wheelbarrow of gear. It always amazed her that no one else seemed to understand the canine body language that was so clear to her.

“Yes,” she answered Bjorn, “she's off to the left, following us.”

Bjorn glanced over to the left and behind, quite casually. “No sign of her.” They were making an effort to appear unaware of her, assuming that she had never seen humans before and would flee in fear if she believed them to be hunting her.

“She's a sneaky one.” Despite never having seen the animal, Merethe had grown quite fond of her and felt pride on her behalf.

Abruptly darting forward and to the right, Artur stopped to point, hackles raised. No words necessary, there was a _snickkk_ as all five travellers drew their daggers, Knud dropping the handles and leading the way, Bjorn right behind him, and Mette, Merethe, and Old Noah spreading out to watch all directions. In the bright clear morning, the sunlight should keep grosslings under cover and prevent attacks, but no one relied on such assumptions in the Silent World.

Artur was pointing at a ruined house, largely collapsed but with a partially intact roof. Together, Knud and Bjorn kicked down the remains of the door and sprang inside. A flurry of combat, a quick search, and they returned, pausing to wipe their daggers with leaves before sheathing them. The group went on without further encounters for the rest of the long day.

They camped that night in the ruin of a cabin, two walls and a partial roof, ashes in a circle of stones proving this to have been one of the campsites of the previous team. Released from his close patrol with the humans, Artur darted away to what Merethe grinningly described as a long-awaited date.

The night was very quiet, and in the morning as they packed up to leave, Merethe placed a chunk of pork loin invitingly on a clean fallen timber. The dog needed to be fed if she was to keep up with the team.

* * *

The second day of the journey dawned clear and bright, exactly the sort of day they'd hoped for. Undisturbed by grosslings, they made good time, Mikkel having stayed on the remains of roads in the original journey and having set out their course very precisely in his report to the Nordic Council. By late afternoon, they reached the abandoned tank.

In front of the tank was a circle of stones, still blackened by campfires, and off to the side of the clearing was a cairn. They had known it would be there, but the sight was still sobering to them all. After a moment of respectful silence beside it, they all turned away and set about making their camp for the next few days as they attempted to repair the damaged vehicle.

The tank having been properly closed up before being abandoned, all of its contents were intact, dry, and clean. Mattresses, pillows, and bedding were all neatly stowed away, and in the back compartment, a good half of the gathered books remained, the less valuable half, to be sure, but still salable and, even after the proceeds were split with the original team, enough to take some of the financial burden off of the Little Copenhagen community. The team moved their gear inside, where they would sleep while making repairs.

Raising the hood, Merethe saw that the engine was indeed as Mikkel had described it: largely burned, melted, and fused. Some parts could be salvaged; the rest would have to be rebuilt. Fortunately they had brought everything they were likely to need and, if they found themselves unable to fix it, they had only a two-day hike back to the outpost. The interior lights and external sensors seemed intact, so Mette scrambled up onto the roof to set up an array of wind-belts to power them while the team worked on the engine, the light wind being sufficient for the purpose.

The team spent the evening tearing out and sorting the damaged parts of the engine. Artur was dismissed to enjoy himself while Knud took first watch, followed by Noah, and then Bjorn. Mette and Merethe did not stand watch as they needed to be fully alert in the morning as they took on the monumental task of rebuilding the tank's engine. The external sensors were working, but everyone felt better with a guard standing watch outside as well.

In the morning, Merethe requested everyone else to retreat to the tank while she attempted first contact with the feral dog. Whistling, she summoned Artur back to her and then called softly, kindly, trying to lure the dog to her. The dog remained hidden, though Merethe caught several glimpses of gray fur through the summer foliage. After a while, she gave up and tossed a hunk of slightly spoiled beef in the direction of the hidden animal, then retreated into the tank to watch through the windows.

“There!” she breathed as the dog darted out to grab the meat and race back into the bushes.

“That thing's a _dog?”_ Bjorn asked in disbelief. “It looks like a small bear!”

“She's the product of thirty or forty generations of dogs surviving out here among the grosslings,” Merethe reproved him. “Of course she has to be large and powerful.” Struck by a thought, she glanced over at Knud, also large and powerful, but decided not to joke about him. “She's got to be smart, too. Her puppies …” She trailed off, already daydreaming about big gray puppies.


	6. Repairs

“How goes the romance?” Mette asked, pulling out another burned wire and following it with her eyes.

“I think it's winding down,” Merethe replied before putting a wire cap between her lips as she spliced in a length of wire.

“Think she'll run off then?”

Removing the wire cap and using it to splice the other end of the bridging wire, Merethe considered the question. “No, I don't think so. Why would she? We're feeding her and haven't threatened her, so why not hang around? Besides, even if she runs off, she was at the outpost when we got there, so she probably has a den around there that she'll want to go back to. And there's Artur, too. She doesn't seem to have a pack, and dogs are pack animals —”

“Are they?” Merethe blinked at the other woman in astonishment. It was one thing to be unable to interpret canine body language, but to know so little about them that she doubted they were pack animals? “I mean,” Mette went on hastily, “we know the Rash affected cats even though they're immune; mightn't it have affected immune dogs too? Maybe dogs out here _aren't_ pack animals anymore, and she's alone because that's how she wants to be.”

“I … I hadn't thought of that. I mean, they've been pack animals for millions of years … but the Rash has changed so many things …” She stared down at the wires in her hand, unseeing. “Still. Still, she _is_ out there, and we _are_ feeding her, and she probably does have a den near the outpost, so she shouldn't just run off and disappear. No, even so, I don't think we'll lose her.”

“ _Can_ we keep feeding her? I know you brought extra jerky for her, but she's a lot bigger than _I_ expected, at least.”

“There's enough to keep her interested in us for a week or so. If she gets too hungry, she can hunt —”

“Hey, look at this!” What Mette held up was clearly two wires spliced together with a wire cap, the whole soot-covered from the fire months earlier.

“Hmm?”

“This must be Tuuri's work, patching it up before it failed completely. It's amazing that she kept this hunk of junk going as long as she did.”

“Don't call it names! We want it to work for us!”

“ _What?_ You're … kidding, right? The tank doesn't know what we call it —”

“It's bad manners to call it names. It's damaged now, but it kept the explorers alive through the winter. It kept _your brother_ alive. It deserves respect!” She stopped herself. Mette wasn't part of the Little Copenhagen community, which was rather less skeptical than the rest of diminished Denmark, for many of them were sailors and fishermen and at sea it was sometimes difficult to doubt the spirits of ships and the magic of wind and wave. “So, uh, did you know Tuuri?” she asked, changing the subject rather hastily.

“Uh, uh, no, I never met her.” The other was thrown a little by the sudden change in the conversation. “Mikkel didn't know her either. I don't believe any of the team knew each other except, you know, the two Finns.”

“Then how did Mikkel get involved? I mean, there wasn't any Dane among the organizers; how did they know him?”

“That Norwegian general,” Mette all but snarled. “Mikkel worked for him for _seven years,_ and he came back to us three years ago, and he was just starting to be _happy_ again when that evil little man came to our farm. He came right up to the farmhouse and asked to speak to Mikkel. They should have run him off! _I_ would have run him off, if I'd been there, but I was working in Rønne; you know that. He talked to Mikkel alone and then he left, and Mikkel said he was going to the Silent World. That evil little Norwegian nearly got him killed before, and then again this winter! I don't know what hold he has over my poor brother, but if I ever get my hands on him —” Mette broke off, resuming in a rather different tone, “But then, it _has_ worked out for Mikkel. So far at least. He went off to Finland … Well. Anyway.”

Unable to think of a response to that remarkable soliloquy, Merethe hastily leaned into the engine and closely examined a randomly chosen relay. She'd certainly distracted Mette from her slip regarding the possible spirit of the tank, but she hadn't expected anything like that!

They worked in silence after that, but for occasional requests for tools or discussion of whether some part was still usable or should be replaced.

And so the days passed, with constant work: wires to be traced and pulled out or spliced, relays and fuses to be replaced, everything to be tested over and over because, while they had a lot of spare parts, they didn't have enough to repair it again if they caused another fire, and they were all eager to get back to the outpost. At least they had the radio working and had been able to punch a signal through the omnipresent static, letting those back at the outpost know that they were alive, well, and working.

Every evening, Artur ran off to visit his good friend, and every morning the team retreated to the tank while Merethe tossed some beef jerky to the feral dog. Every day, she let the food land a little bit closer to the tank, luring the big animal in.

* * *

The work was almost complete; the tank would be repaired by end of day, well enough to get to the outpost, at least. Merethe decided it was time to step up her efforts with the dog. Calling Artur back as usual, she tossed the beef jerky out as usual, but not quite so much as usual. Then, in a break from what the dog would expect, she knelt beside the tank, quiet, unthreatening, waiting.

After a long moment, just as she was about to give up, the dog slunk out, belly to the ground, eyes wide and fixed on her, seizing the meat and fleeing to her favorite hiding place under the bushes. Merethe smiled slightly, keeping her lips closed — best not to let the dog see any hint of teeth, lest she take it for a threat — and tossed out a chunk of cheese, all the cheese that should have been part of her luncheons for the past few days. The dog peered openly out of the bushes, looking back and forth between the cheese and the waiting human. Oh, she smelled it, that was certain, and she was both hungry and wary. Which feeling would win?

The dog lunged out, snatched up the cheese, retreated. Merethe turned to the others, watching through the windshield, and gestured them out with a happy grin. There was still work to be done.


	7. Homecoming

In the morning after Merethe had set out jerky and cheese for the dog, Noah pressed the starter button while the whole team held their breath and Merethe and Bjorn crossed their fingers in their pockets, not wanting the skeptics, Knud and Mette, to see their superstitious actions. The engine started with a healthy rumble, and the whole team broke into cheers. They'd done it! They had the tank, they could build a wall to protect their little colony, and they could sell the remaining books to help finance it.

The high lasted all day long, despite several delays while Knud and Bjorn climbed out to remove obstacles that they'd hardly noticed in walking, but which might well damage the wooden patch — the lid of a crate — which covered the underside of the broken floorboards where a troll had smashed its way through. Though the tank was capable of a better turn of speed, Noah kept it down to a walking pace so as not to overstress the freshly repaired engine, and thus on their return, they camped at the same spot where they had camped on their way out.

Still on a high note, but watchful as ever in the Silent World, the team prepared a feast of all their remaining food but for one day's emergency rations apiece. The feast complete and everyone happily full, all but Bjorn retired to the tank for a well-deserved rest, chatting excitedly about the work to be done back at the outpost.

“Hey, Merethe, is the dog still out there?”

Distracted by a conversation between Knud and Mette about a gravel pit near the outpost, Merethe answered absently, “Yeah, Stormy's staying with us. She'll follow us all the way back.”

 _“Stormy?”_ Noah repeated, laughing.

“I have to call her _something,”_ she defended, “and she's got that beautiful gray fur, and she moves like lightning —” She broke off, glaring at Noah and now Knud and Mette, who were grinning at her as well, their conversation interrupted.

“Stormy it is, then,” Mette stated as the men forced their faces into some semblance of solemnity. Merethe decided to help Bjorn stand guard.

* * *

“Go on, I'll follow on foot with Artur.”

“And _Stormy,”_ Bjorn added with a wide grin, having been filled in on the dog's new name by the rest of the team.

“And Stormy,” Merethe agreed, consciously not gritting her teeth. _Of course_ she'd named the dog. What was so funny? What did they expect? The big gray animal was _her_ dog now, and she wasn't going to refer to her as just “dog” forever. Chuckling, the other four packed up the camp and boarded the tank, which started without a hint of difficulty and began the last leg of its long, long journey.

Merethe placed a small chunk of meat on a clean stone and set off after the tank, Artur trotting obediently at her heels, his canine senses alert to any possible threat. From occasional twitches of his ears, his companion knew that the feral dog was following, silent, hidden. Merethe smiled. Stormy was so very sneaky.

By late afternoon, they stood at the edge of the wide pasture between the forest and the outpost. Burned off regularly, most recently just two years ago, it was open and treeless, now with a trail of crushed grasses where the tank had ground its way through. Merethe strolled down the trail, dropping occasional chunks of beef jerky or cheese as she went, treating Artur occasionally as well, and never looking back for the follower. At the gate in the first fence, she sent Artur inside, turned and knelt, waiting for Stormy.

Back at the edge of the forest, there was a flash of gray fur. Merethe watched anxiously. Would she follow the trail of treats? Or would she turn away?

The dog came out from the trees, low to the ground, practically crawling on her belly, but she was coming forward. One treat snapped up, and she was looking ahead to the next … and the next …

Merethe waited, scarcely daring to breathe, as the dog came closer. Ten meters. Five. She was less than a meter away now, eyeing the last treat directly in front of the woman. “Stormy,” Merethe murmured, “just a little closer. Come, Stormy, come home. You belong with us. You belong with _me._ Come home, Stormy.”

The dog looked up, directly into the human's eyes. For a long moment they gazed at each other as their world hung in the balance.

A little braver, the dog slunk forward, down on her belly, touched the treat with her nose, and the woman reached forward, greatly daring, and scratched behind her ears. Wolfing down the treat, the dog looked up again into the woman's eyes.

There was a flash of something Merethe had never felt before, a recognition, a welcome. She stood, and when she entered the outpost, Stormy trotted at her heels, home at last.


	8. To Build a Wall

“Bjorn said you'd picked up a pet bear,” Vilhelm said, surveying Stormy, who was pressing herself against Merethe's left leg, fearful of all the strangeness around her. “I thought he was kidding.”

As he started towards his wife, the dog edged forward, still in contact with her human's leg, until she was clearly between them. Hackles raised, she growled, a menacing bass rumble.

“Ah — I believe we have a problem here,” the man observed, stopping in his tracks and putting his hand on his pistol.

“It's okay, Stormy,” Merethe crooned. “He's a friend, he's my man, he's your man too now. That's just Vilhelm, no need to be afraid …” and so on as she stroked the dog's raised hackles and scratched behind her ears. At last the dog calmed, looking up at her with eyes both frightened and trustful.

“Okay, approach _slowly,”_ Merethe instructed. She frowned slightly when her husband drew and checked his pistol before obeying, but did not argue. On the one hand, she believed her bond with Stormy was enough to keep him safe; on the other hand, Stormy was bigger than she was and quite capable of killing a grown man if so inclined. If Merethe had to choose between them, she would regretfully choose Vilhelm.

Looking back and forth between them, Stormy pressed harder against Merethe's legs, threatening to push her over, but at least not growling. The woman was still scratching her behind the ears with one hand as the two humans extended their free hands to each other. The big dog stared intently at their joined hands, then slowly, very slowly and very cautiously, leaned away from Merethe to sniff at Vilhelm. Never having seen a pistol, or indeed any weapon, she was undisturbed as he kept his pistol trained on her head the whole time.

“Well,” the man said, finally, having been well sniffed at but not bitten, “since your pet bear appears to have decided not to eat me after all, maybe we can try to go to our bunkhouse. We have our own, you and me, at least for now. Well, you and me and the pet bear.” Merethe sighed inwardly. Apparently Stormy would be her pet bear forever.

With Stormy safely ensconced in their bunkhouse, the two humans were free to join the rest of the team for a late supper and a discussion of their plans. While one team was collecting the tank, the rest had been putting together a large and asymmetrical plow that would be mounted on the front of the tank and used to dig a trench outside the existing fences, throwing the excavated dirt to the left so as to form an earthen breastwork as their initial defenses. That project would begin on the following day.

* * *

Running the plow would unavoidably make a lot of noise, and to make matters worse, the day was cloudy and threatened rain. After some discussion, they decided to proceed even though grosslings could be more active with the overcast. They'd been lucky so far in that no grosslings had yet discovered them, but the faster they got their defenses up, the less they had to rely on luck. Moreover, rain would delay them for days by making the soil heavier and more difficult for their tank to move.

All hands turned out for the event. The four snipers, Dedric, Mette, Knud, and Rikke, took their places on the roofs of the bunkhouses; Old Noah drove the tank with Lucas and Young Noah riding on top with rifles and shotguns, with Britta the cat prowling elegantly back and forth and around them, unperturbed by the sound and vibration; the other nine human members and all three dogs patrolled at ground level behind the outermost fence.

The first pass went well and quickly. The resulting trench and earthen mound would scarcely slow an attacking grossling, but many more passes were planned. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief as the tank returned to its starting point and began again, but no one let down their guard. The probability of attack grew with each passing minute.

The second pass was half complete when Britta abruptly arched her back, hissing and pointing with her nose out into the pasture between the forest and the compound. Lucas pounded on the roof of the tank to alert Noah, who immediately halted the tank and ran out with his shotgun to join the defense. A half dozen voices began asking at once, “Where is it?”

Most weapons were now pointed in the direction indicated by Britta, though the snipers were scanning back and forth for other foes. Where _was_ the thing?

“It's vermin!” Lucas shouted, and the two men scrambled down from the tank, drawing their daggers. They wouldn't waste ammunition on vermin beasts; those were best handled quietly with daggers and their steel-shanked boots. Their heavy trousers should protect them from the worse of the creatures' attacks.

The fickle breeze finally brought the scent to the dogs, already agitated from the alertness of the humans around them. Artur and Kolina, well-trained guard dogs, growled softly, hackles raised, but held their places, while Stormy, very much _not_ a trained guard dog, lunged at the fence, snarling and snapping.

“Stormy! No! You'll hurt yourself!” Merethe had not managed to put a collar on the dog and could only take her by the scruff of the neck and pull. As the dog outweighed her and was considerably stronger, this was ineffective. Releasing the animal, Merethe ran for the gate, unlatched it, yanked it open. “Stormy! Here! Out this way!” With one quick look, the feral dog saw the open gate and ran for it, charging out to rip and tear at the hated grosslings, while Merethe closed and latched the gate, rejoining the other humans waiting for the vermin beasts that would, inevitably, slip through.

Mette glanced down at this drama, returned her attention to the pasture. She could now see the vermin crowding forward, and she itched to open fire at the monstrosities, but even if she could hit one — not guaranteed as they were small and moving — the rifles were very loud. There was already too much noise; she didn't need to add to it.

“Mette,” Knud said quietly beside her, “there's more.” He was taking aim, about to shoot. Mette opened her mouth to object just as he fired.


	9. Attack of the Hydra

The thing reared up, a flattened snake-like body a good three meters across but probably a quarter that in depth, stretching back who knew how far, a mottled green on top that had camouflaged it but a sickly white on the underside. The body divided in front into well over a dozen necks several meters long terminating in heads the size of horses' heads, seemingly all mouth and teeth. One head hung limp, smashed by Knud's shot, the neck bobbing up and down as the giant moved, while the rest stretched forward hungrily, weaving left and right as if searching for prey.

Still over a hundred meters away but no longer attempting to sneak up on them, the thing raised the middle of its body like an enormous inchworm, pushing the head end perhaps ten meters forward as it came down. It was still well out of range of the shotguns and the heads were weaving too fast for the snipers to have a chance of hitting them.

Below the snipers' nests on the roofs, the three men outside the fence were hastily climbing back up on the tank, getting out of reach of the vermin beasts so they could concentrate on the approaching giant, The other humans were still fighting the vermin beasts that were oozing through the fence, the two dogs ferocious in their defense. Stormy was raging through the vermin outside.

“The base of the neck!” Knud shouted. “Necks,” he corrected himself quietly, suiting actions to words and shooting into the thick mass where the necks rose from the body. He hit it, certainly, the other snipers were firing too, but were they doing any good? Could four snipers stop this thing before it reached the men on the tank?

One neck fell forward, now dragging as the giant advanced. The rest were still weaving but clearly focused on the tank. The snipers were still shooting …

Quite suddenly, Stormy charged at the giant, barking wildly and dancing in front of it. Some of the heads turned towards her, the rest were still intent on the tank, but the monster slowed with its divided attention. With the dog so close to them, just out of reach, the heads on that side stopped their weaving motion, lunged straight at her. With no need of discussion among themselves, all four snipers opened fire on those heads. Just two volleys, and all five heads were dangling limp. Seven heads down now.

The dog retreated as if surprised by what had happened, but quickly turned towards the remaining heads, barking once more. The giant was close now, within shotgun range for the men on the tank, and eight mouths were reaching for them, ignoring the furious dog. The other humans within the fence tried to disregard the vermin beasts clawing at their trousers, the guard dogs snarling as they tore the monstrosities to pieces; their shotguns were in their hands, but they had no good angle to shoot the heads without potentially hitting their own men.

The men on the tank and the snipers fired almost as one. Unable to coordinate their shots, several hit the same head and so only four heads died. The remaining heads were striking — the men on the tank rolled away, dodged the teeth that snatched at them, fired up into the mouths — three more heads dead but one still moving — the snipers held fire, fearing to shoot their own men as they dodged —

Knud fired. It was a dangerous shot at the one remaining head, which was diving down at one of the men; Knud could not see which. If any of the men dodged the wrong way …

The last head crashed against the tank as the giant collapsed, no live head left to control it. The three men on the tank got shakily to their feet, turned to wave to the others.

Knud closed his eyes in relief. After a moment the soldier opened his eyes to resume his duty, studying the surroundings for possible attackers.

* * *

With the giant dead, the three men on the tank climbed down, disappeared behind it; only one, Lucas, returned to join Britta on top. The tank began to grind forward, plowing up dirt and the occasional vermin beast, while everyone on the ground cleaned up the remaining beasts from the swarm. Stormy, still outside the fence, prowled around the fallen giant, disposing of another vermin beast now and then.

The second pass was completed without further incident. As the tank returned to its starting point to begin another pass, it stopped by the gate in the outer fence, allowing Young Noah to climb wearily out and enter the compound.

“Noah!” Sofia Andersen, his wife and also their medic, ran to him as he stumbled in, his shirt in tatters and bandages visible underneath. Knud watched them for a moment, returned his gaze to their surroundings. Whatever had happened to the man, it was his duty to keep watch.

A third pass, a fourth, a fifth. More grosslings, trolls of modest size, charged the outpost and were picked off by snipers before they got close. Merethe managed to calm Stormy and bring her back into the compound, leading her into their bunkhouse and leaving her with a chunk of salt pork as a reward for her bravery.

For all that long day, Knud and the other snipers kept watch while the tank rolled and everyone else patrolled below.


End file.
